The Hopkins Case – Chapter Fourteen
Tim was back at his desk, working sporadically on the report for the arrests, spending most of his time watching the drama in the conference room. Miljana had stayed on at the request of Agent McIntyre who was grateful for the extra support handling the tsunami of emotions that hit when the Marshals walked through the door with the little girl in tow. The reunion of Christie Harrison with her parents was to take place right then, not ideal but the circumstances dictated the need. The Harrisons couldn't hold it together. Everything collapsed quickly. Miljana set a hand lightly on Agent McIntyre's arm, leaned in and whispered kindly, suggested she stop trying to control it and just let it happen. In the end that was all she could do anyway, just let it happen.
Art walked over to stand at Tim's desk at one point, and Rachel moved closer to be part of the conversation. But all Art had to say was, "I can't take this. I'm going for coffee. Anybody want anything?" He left quickly, came back a half hour later more composed.
Miljana came out after things had calmed enough and plunked herself in the chair opposite Tim.
"Wow," she said, and smoothed the fatigue from her face with her hands. "And this is your job?"
Tim opened his eyes wide, shook his head. "Nope. Normally we're crying 'cause we're laughing so hard at how stupid people are, or we're not laughing at all 'cause we're crying at how shitty people are. All this emotional stuff today," he waved a hand around the room, "it's just weird."
Miljana studied Tim carefully, unable to determine if he were being funny, decided he must be when he grinned at her like an idiot.
"I have to go to another funeral tomorrow," he said, leaned back and stretched. "A double actually. You want to come?"
"Boy, you sure know how to show a girl a good time." She smiled, sad, tired, happy. "What the hell, why not?" She stood up and walked behind his desk to peer through the blinds out the window, watching people walking past on the street below.
Tim swiveled in his chair contentedly following her movements.
He grinned for her again when she looked over, got one back. "I'll take you for dinner when we're done. I'm starving. I missed lunch."
"Let's go to your place and order in."
"Fine by me."
"Agent McIntyre suggested I might want to try applying at Family Services to get more experience. She said she'd put in a word for me." She looked at him expectantly, inviting an opinion.
"Well, it's not Serbia, but there's some fucked up shit going on right here in Kentucky."
Simon Tislow's funeral was poorly attended. Tim and Rachel made the trip to London for the service to see if any other bad guys showed up. They half expected to see someone else they could bring in and laughed when they found they were disappointed when no one came. Art had thoughtfully sent the service information to Deputy van Hassel but unsurprisingly he was a no-show, too.
Tim decided he wanted to attend Donny Hopkins' funeral out of some bizarre sense of ownership. And maybe he needed closure. The families of the star-crossed lovers had agreed to bury them together a second and last time, but more traditionally. Although Donny and Patty were the first victims in a week of murders and fatal accidents, they were the last to be laid to rest. The bodies of the parrot-murdering junkie and his girlfriend were slow to be released, caught up in the multi-jurisdictional bureaucracy of a convoluted murder investigation involving at least three states and three levels of law enforcement. Even Simon Tislow and Cole Ferguson, Powder White's right-hand man, were already interred.
Tim was surprised when Art showed up at the cemetery at the end of the road, appearing at his side before the service began. Coincidentally it was the same graveyard where Tim had stretched his legs the week before and he took his boss on a tour through the rows and pointed out the marker for S. Tislow.
"So why are you here?" Tim asked.
Art shrugged, "I feel I owe Donny Hopkins. So much good came from tracking down his sorry ass."
"Have you spoken to Judge Taylor yet? Is he satisfied?"
"You know, it's funny, but he got a bit choked up when I explained to him what happened. Said that Donny shouldn't have had to pay with his life." Art shook his head expressively. "I don't get Judges. They're a strange bunch."
Pete wasn't any taller than Tim, but more solidly built and calm where Tim would fidget. Out on the shooting range though, or in their nest on a hill in Afghanistan, Tim was the focused one, more consistent with the shots, cool under pressure. In the end, Tim was always the one on the trigger when they went out and Pete was his spotter. No one messed with the undeniable chemistry.
The idea was Tim's and Pete had approved, good-natured and trusting, a team. They refined a plan together, took it up the proper chain of command through their Squad Sergeant who was enthusiastic and supportive, to their Lieutenant who was an idiot and stalled it.
So, with the blessing and complicity of some of the senior NCOs, the boys got creative and networked and connived and made it happen, a word to air ops, a word to the next squad leader sent to cover the area, a few cases of beer.
The idea was this. There was a section of road north of Kandahar, a supply route and a narrowing, an ideal place to set an IED because it was a difficult stretch to secure. You couldn't approach from any direction undetected to monitor the area. Teams had tried in the past, holed up for days and back again when the supplies ran out, nothing for their efforts. The enemy watched and waited; the Rangers gave up and went back to base, then another IED, another explosion, more casualties, more injuries.
Another team was sent out to sit on the hillside, concealed, unsuccessful, and when the helo came to pull them out a few days later, Tim and Pete slipped in, their entrance veiled by the whirl of dust kicked up by the rotors and the bustle of the troops loading. They hid under a camouflage covering until dark. When the sun was down and the moon not yet up, they folded their cover and slipped silently into a position they'd picked out from aerial photographs – a shadowy crag on a hill at the end of the pass looking back down the lethal length of the road. It was a good couple of kilometers to cover so they brought the M107 for range, set up, sipped at their water, wet dry lips and waited.
And waited.
They stretched out limbs and groaned, took turns sleeping, bitched, sipped at their water, chewed rations and waited and watched and waited. The sun was hot by mid-morning and they sweated under the gear and the layers of combat clothing, then the sun went down and the bare ground gave up its heat without a fight and the sweat froze on their skin and the distance they'd slowly put between themselves during the daylight to keep cool closed quickly as they tried to retain any warmth at all.
And they waited.
"Jesus fucking Christ," Tim hissed, "you're not drinking enough to have to piss again."
"I gotta take a piss," Pete chuckled, punchy after sitting in one place for almost three days.
"Fuck. Well aim better this time, dipshit."
"What am I supposed to do?" he complained, gesturing at his crotch. "It's so long I have no control over it past a point."
"Oh, for fuck's sake," Tim cursed. "No wonder I have to do all the shooting on this rifle if you can't even control an inch and a half of dick."
"And you're supposed to be this hot shot sniper with excellent eyesight and good distance perception and you can't see the difference between an inch and a half and ten inches? Whose dick did you suck to get into sniper school?"
"Not yours – I'd've presumed looking that you didn't have one."
"You always look at guy's crotches?"
"Only when I'm choosing team mates to sit in a hole with. I look for the guys who've got one long enough to piss so it doesn't run back in. But you fooled me. You were padding."
"Fuck you."
"Asshole," Tim muttered. He kept his eye on the road during the bickering. Watching. "Uh, Pete," he whispered.
"Shut up. I can't piss when you're talking."
"There's a woman walking toward the road. Ten o'clock."
"Shit."
Pete rolled back over and picked up his scope and Tim settled into position behind the rifle.
"Do I see kids? Has she got kids with her?" Pete whispered.
Tim peered through the rifle scope, tracking down the road until he could see the woman. "Yeah, I see two kids. What are they doing out here? They shouldn't be out here. There's nothing out here for them."
"She's stopped."
"Shit," Tim sighed, his world shrinking to this minute. "Are the kids bringing her rocks? They're bringing her rocks, aren't they? What are they covering?"
"Yeah, that's an affirmative. Rocks."
"When's the next convoy coming through?" Tim asked, then, "Fuck."
"What?"
"Wires. I saw a wire."
"The convoy is close, man, I can see the dust. Maybe that's how they do it. Signal and set up right when the convoy's coming. I mean it's not like we come through here on a schedule for them." Pete talked urgently. "What do we do? Do we shoot the IED? We gotta warn the convoy – detonate it."
"And kill the kids? Besides, it might not go anyway. Depends on the explosives they're using."
"We gotta try. We have a choice? What else can we do?"
The two stared into their scopes, a narrow perspective on the world, and tried to come up with a plan to encompass the larger picture.
"Call it," Tim said, settling for an uncomfortable solution in an uncomfortably tight time frame. "Call it on the woman."
Pete paused, not understanding.
"Call it!" Tim hissed, cheek pressed into the rifle, "They'll stop for a body. Call it. The woman."
Pete looked through the scope, called the corrections for the shot. Tim listened, adjusted, steadied, dropped his finger on the trigger and fired. When the sight lined up again the kids were gone, scrambling for cover in the hillside, the woman lay in a spray of red.
"Shit."
The convoy halted when they spotted an object on the road ahead, cautious on this particular stretch. After a silence of a few minutes, broken only by the wind scraping at the rocks, the Rangers in the convoy ventured out of their vehicles and set up a perimeter.
Tim and Pete broke down the rifle and made their way carefully along the hill until they were abreast of the lead gun truck, keeping to the shadows, careful not to be seen by either side. They reasoned that if there were any enemy snipers in the area, they'd have taken a shot at the men on the road by now. So when they were as close as they could get, they stepped out from their cover, rifles up high over their heads, praying that the Rangers in the convoy weren't too nervous, and walked at a casual pace, not too fast, not too slow, calling out their names and ranks and units as they approached. They set their weapons on the ground and walked another ten feet before stopping and waiting for two of the men from the convoy to approach and identify them.
"Gutterson?"
"Hey, Grinder." Tim used the man's nickname and got an instant grin.
"What the fuck, man?" the corporal hollered. "What're you doing out here?"
"Watching the road."
The corporal turned and waved back to the convoy. "It's okay," he called out enthusiastically.
The Lieutenant wasn't as pleased to see them. "You shot a civilian, a woman?" he yelled. "Do you have any idea the shit you're in? This is a clusterfuck, Sergeant. This is a court martial waiting for you when you get home. And believe me, you are going home. I already put you down as AWOL when you didn't show up for orders two days ago."
The convoy was still stopped, exposed on the road. They didn't risk moving forward in case there was an IED under the body and no one was volunteering to go check – the haji with the cell phone might be waiting for just that. The Lieutenant hadn't issued an order to call for an EOD team, unsure what he was dealing with and not wanting to be embarrassed if it was nothing, and he hadn't suggested they go back either. And Tim, the senior ranked of the errant sniper duo, was getting an earful.
"Just what are you two doing here, Sergeant? I wasn't informed that there was a sniper team out on this road. Do you have orders to be here?"
Tim had no comeback and 'No excuse, sir' was too cliché to bother with.
"How does a murder trial sound to you, Sergeant?" the Lieutenant yelled then turned to his communications man. "Get on the radio. I want the MPs waiting when we get back to base. I want this idiot in the brig before sundown."
Then Pete had had enough. "Fuck this," he grunted then stomped recklessly up the road past the perimeter toward the body, muttering and cursing.
Tim forgot decorum and rank when he realized what his friend was doing. He pushed the officer aside and sprinted after him. "Pete! Pete, don't! You idiot. Stop!"
The other men were unprepared for Pete's excursion into danger but had fair warning when Tim tried to run past. One of them reached out and got hold of his fatigues, stopping him.
Pete continued angrily down the road, no one dared go after him, and when he reached the woman's body, he bent down and rolled her over. Underneath was a good-sized pack of explosives. He turned around and yelled loudly, sarcasm and spite echoing off the hills, "Holy shit! Look at that. A mother fucking improvised explosive fucking device! What a fucking surprise. And you're fucking welcome for saving your fucking asses!"
Held back by two Rangers, Tim could only watch, screaming, desperate, "Pete, you asshole. Get the fuck back here. Jesus!"
Pete continued to search around the body, eventually straightened again and held up a cell phone. "Hey, anyone want to call home? Haji's paying."
The woman was a man; the Major sitting safely in one of the vehicles saw the whole thing in a different light than the Lieutenant, commended the sniper team and adopted the infiltration technique as routine; Tim got to keep his stripes. When they got back to base, Tim opened the bottle of bourbon he'd been saving for his birthday and toasted Pete and then they drank it all because they hated to see it go bad.
And that was the end of the story that Tim told Miljana, with her on another day in another graveyard, Arlington this time. Tim looked down the row to his left, a long line of white dominoes standing erect to mark the fallen and he had a moment's granting of slapstick, of knocking over Pete's gravestone and it hitting the next one and the next and on and on down the length and breadth of the cemetery until they were all lying down on the ground.
"Is this supposed to make me feel better? 'Cause it doesn't."
Miljana smiled sadly and tucked her hair behind her ears so it would stop blowing in her face when she needed to look at him. And she looked at him and said, "But you didn't know that till you came here, did you?" She stood in front of him, blocking Pete's name, ran a hand down the front of his jacket. "So now you know and you can stop dreading this trip and stop feeling guilty for not coming. It's done."
Tim turned his head to look down the row to his right, down another long line of white dominoes.
"You hungry?" he asked. "I'm starving."
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The End
Author's Note: Thank you again to anyone who read and anyone who took the time to review.